NY TIMES GRETCHEN MORGENSON: So Many Foreclosures, So Little LogicLAST week, the stock market tumbled on news that housing foreclosures and delinquencies rose again in the first quarter. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said that among the 34 million loans it tracks, foreclosures in progress rose 22 percent, to 844,389. That figure was 73 percent higher than in the same period last year. Foreclosures remain one of the great financial ills for the economy. The Bush administration largely overlooked foreclosures affecting average homeowners, focusing instead on propping up elite, troubled financial institutions with taxpayer funds. The Obama administration has said it wants to wrestle the foreclosure issue to the ground by encouraging mortgage loan modifications, but its efforts have gotten little traction...But the most fascinating, and frightening, figures in the data detail how much money is lost when foreclosed homes are sold. In June, the data show almost 32,000 liquidation sales; the average loss on those was 64.7 percent of the original loan balance.Read more...

Foreclosure Directory of Facts: American Dream: Overbought & OverbuiltThey say that owning your own home is the American dream. That dream was overbought, overbuilt (continues to be overbuilt), and is increasingly being foreclosed upon...Builders build because that's what they do. They build until they go bust or as long as they can get funding (which is typically the same thing). Insiders profit as long as they can keep building.Read more

Did HUD Ex-Secretary Cisneros Help Mastermind Preditory Lending"Henry Cisneros on the hot seat...A predatory lending scheme that many experts predict could eventually lead to the worst recession to hit this county, and possibly the entire financial world...which ultimately compensated him generously... after leaving HUD Cisneros became a KB Home board member as well as a Countrywide board member. He created American City Vista, an affordable housing joint venture with KB Home, as KB Home began construction on the disastrous Mirasol project that cost taxpayers millions, of which $5M is still missing. Express-News on the Hot Seat...Read More...

Foreclosing on the American Dream: The Charlotte Observer Special Report Three Part SeriesLoan defaults a growing burden for lower-income neighborhoods. Buying a home has never been easier. And it's never been easier to lose one

Forclosures rise in 47 states:A Bane Amid The Housing Boom: Rising ForeclosuresForeclosure rates rose in 47 states in March, according to Foreclosure.com, an online foreclosure listing service. The rates in Florida, Texas and Colorado are more than twice the national average. Even in New York City and Boston, where real estate markets are white-hot, foreclosures are rising in working-class neighborhoods...

Federal Law - Builders liable for forced use of Title
Just say no to builder incentives with strings attachedOne of the federal government's top housing officials has this practical advice for anyone negotiating with a builder to buy a new house: You can always say no...But federal real-estate settlement rules "require that these incentives be legitimate and not built into the price of the house or the cost of the loan." In other words, builders cannot tempt you with illusory benefits  alleged discounts that you're actually paying for somewhere else in the deal. Read more...Special Reports:KB Home Foreclosure Rate More Than Double Other Builders.
Records show that KB foreclosures are as high as 30%.

Texas leads the nation in total home foreclosuresTexas has earned bragging rights in a dubious arena: Homeowners went to foreclosure in 2004 in total numbers that far exceeded any other state.While the state was laying claim to No. 1, Bexar County had more residential foreclosures in December than California, West Virginia, Montana and Hawaii combined.

Denver Post Foreclosure Series - Foreclosing on the American DreamFHA program key in surge of foreclosuresA key factor in the state's record-setting wave of foreclosures, critics say, is an FHA program that allows people to borrow more than their houses are worth with little or no money down. Created to extend the dream of homeownership to first-time buyers, the so-called FHA gift program instead has led to rampant foreclosures. Nearly 6,000 FHA loans have wound up in foreclosure in Colorado in the past two years, and during that time the program allowed more than 25 percent of FHA buyers to use gifts as down payments.

Recordforeclosure pace More than 9,500 real estate foreclosures have been filed in the Denver area in the first half of the year, about 34 percent more than in the first six months of 2005. It's on pace to be the worst year ever in terms of the number of foreclosures, topping 17,122 in 1988, though the area's population growth since then means the total percentage of homes in foreclosure is smaller.

Foreclosures still surgingResidential foreclosure filings continue to flood public offices throughout the metro area, with no signs that the record-setting pace of failed home loans will let up. Foreclosures in the seven-county metro area jumped by nearly a third in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2005, according to public-trustee counts.

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